Richmond is now home to the world's largest indoor vertical berry farm
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The world's first indoor vertical berry farm just sprouted up in Chesterfield.
Why it matters: Come early next year, locally grown, peak-season strawberries will be available year-round.
The big picture: Plenty Unlimited Inc., which started as a student project at the University of Wyoming a decade ago, opened its Richmond farm last week.
- The company uses state-of-the-art technology, AI and vertical towers to grow produce for the 21st century by removing the most unpredictable part of farming: Mother Nature.
Zoom in: The California-based company selected Richmond for its first East Coast facility and massive-scale berry farm in 2022, investing $300 million in the Meadowville Technology Park space.
- Plenty also has a vertical lettuce farm in Compton and a research and development center in Laramie, Wyoming.
- Plenty's Richmond Farm will grow around 4 million pounds of Driscoll's strawberries a year in a roughly 40,000-square-foot space, all on 30-foot-tall towers.
- The berry farm is the first for its Richmond campus and should bring around 60 jobs to Chesterfield to start, and ultimately more than 300, a Plenty spokesperson tells Axios.
How it works: Computers control the light, temperature and humidity inside the plant's 12 grow rooms.
- AI analyzes 10 million data points daily, adapting as needed to ensure the best possible strawberry.
- Sorry bees, but pollination is engineered and computerized, too.
- All these methods mean less water, pollution and waste than traditional farming, plus zero pesticides, which means berries that don't need washing.
What's next: 🍓The first RVA strawberries should be ready to eat by early next year and those berries could feed roughly 100 million consumers, all within a day's drive from RVA.